Site Report 2
It is important to begin the history of Seattle and more specifically the history of this block, especially environmental, before the settlement of white immigrants. The analysis of environmental history would not be complete without it.
While it is hard to find specific data on my singular block, there is information about the presence of Native American villages and settlement in the University District. From information provided by the University's American Inidians of the Pacific Northwest Collection I have gathered that groups of people have lived on the area for hundreds of years both living with and sculpting the environment in a relationship based on coexistance rather than the manipulation that characterized the relationship of the white man to the landscape (Buerge 2016).
These two maps, Kroll 1891 and USGS 1894, depict the city of Seattle before the turn of the 20th century. What is apparent in both of these maps is the slow expansion and sprawl of human settlement, with the growth of wealth and urban population, across the lake. The USGS map illustrates nicely the topography of the landscape as well as the layout of streets, settlements, and rail. These early developments on the land seem to provide a basic skeleton for later urban expansion and environmental manipulation. Block 51 is located most likely somewhere around where the red cross is situated on the map, near the settlment of Latona but still untouched by the fingers of urban development. It is hard to know with the level of detail what exactly existed on Block 51 in this period in terms of the types of flora and fauna. What I like about the Kroll map, in this sense, while it’s not the most accurate in terms of scale, is the illustrations of landscape. The viewer can physically see the manipulation of the coast line, the flattening of the city center, and the receding tree line at the edge of the urban settlement. In the bottom right corner it even shows logs floating in the water, an indication of a logging company and manipulation of the natural environment.
Of course, simple scrutinization of these two maps would not be enough to determine the specific flora and fauna that existed at the time. Though I was able to find information about native Seattle plants and animals on the king county government website. Information about the specific native species can be found on the webpage linked here.
A fairly significant feature of Block 51 is the University Playground, thus the environmental history of the block cannot be discussed without investigation of Seattle parks and their past. With the turn of the 20th century, as discussed in lecture, urban centers were defined by overcrowded spaces and industrial pollution. At the same time the American culture and philosophy linked the image of the “true” American to the landscape where honest hard work came from the cultivation of land. Additionally, this was the era of Roosevelt who was the pioneer of national parks. This was a time in history where the natural environment was truly being considered in the context of preservation and in contrast to urban life. In the midst of all this circulating philosophy came both the rise of the Olmsted Brothers and the rise of the public park. The Olmsted Brothers preached about the importance of greenery amidst the density and miasma of urban centers and published park plans for cities from New York to Seattle. In 1903 the Olmsted Brothers worked with the Seattle Board of Park Commissioners to lay out a plan for the comprehensive Seattle park network, pictured above, of which University Playground was a part. (Park History, https://www.seattle.gov/parks/about-us/park-history)
The biggest landscape change for Block 51, I would speculate, was the construction of Interstate 5 in 1964. Located immediately to the West of the block the construction of I-5 required immense demolition and uprooting of anything in its path as well as excavation through elevated areas(Keeley 2014). While Block 51 sits on a slight slope itself, I-5 is consistently 5-10 meters lower in elevation in comparison to the area around it (Development Services Office Seattle). This process involved the sculpting of the landscape and the carving out of space for Interstate 5.
The maps to the left were published by the Seattle Development Services Office and provide information about the processes going on underneath Block 51. Using their interactive water and sewer map I found that Block 51 has three water mains and sewer mainlines running underneath the three north south streets - 7th, 8th and 9th. Each main has smaller branches providing water or collecting sewage from each household as well as the park. The nice thing about this map is that the user can click on each main or service pipe and find out its details. For example, the screencap of the water map tells us that the water main running under 7th Ave was installed in 1907 and is made of cast iron and the screencap of the sewer map tells us that the mainline running under 8th Ave was installed in 1909 and is about 12 feet underground (Development Services Office Seattle).
These maps tell us about the ways in which natural processes of water flow and biological waste have been contained and compartmentalized by humans with the growth of urban spaces and technology.
The present day natural environment is limited and far removed from what was there pre-urban settlement. Block 51 has been completely changed by the processes of urbanization and planning to the point where each and every form of vegetation was put there intentionally. I’ve captured in the four photographs to the right incidents of greenery amongst the built environment. From simple moss growing between bricks to vines crawling up brick walls to old trees in the park, the relationship between humans and the environment seems to be ever-present.